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What Google’s Approach Reveals About Transformation

Summary

Digital transformation in procurement has focused heavily on technology, data, and process. But closing CPO Outlook 2025, Suzana Drakulic from Google Workspace highlighted an element that rarely appears in implementation roadmaps: trust. Drawing on Google’s approach to AI adoption, she explored why psychological safety, bold leadership, and the decision to begin matter more than perfect technology. This article examines how trust functions as infrastructure for transformation — and what the CPO Outlook 2025 and EBG | Xperience survey findings reveal about the gap between capability and empowerment.

Technology conversations dominate discussions about procurement’s future. Data quality, system integration, AI capabilities, automation potential — these topics filled the agenda at CPO Outlook 2025. But the closing session with Suzana Drakulic, Head of Google Workspace Nordics & Central Eastern Europe, shifted attention to something harder to measure: trust.

Her argument is worth taking seriously. Google hasn’t just implemented AI — they’ve built an environment where AI-enabled work thrives. And according to Suzana, the difference isn’t primarily technological. It’s organizational and cultural.

The Survey Evidence

Before exploring Suzana’s perspective, consider what the CPO Outlook 2025 and EBG | Xperience surveys revealed about current challenges.

Resource overload topped the list of operational bottlenecks, with a clear majority of CPO Outlook respondents citing too many tasks, too reactive an approach, and insufficient time for strategy. Data quality and system fragmentation followed close behind.

But dig deeper into the findings and a different pattern emerges. The EBG | Xperience workshop mappings showed teams that are “skilled but stuck” — possessing capabilities but lacking empowerment to act. Organizations with transformation momentum but unclear processes and roles. Personal capability that exceeds organizational enablement.

These aren’t technology problems. They’re trust problems.

What Trust Enables

Suzana described Google’s measurement culture — they measure everything, from canteen food satisfaction to optimal distances for healthy step counts. But her point wasn’t about surveillance or control. It was about using data to improve rather than to judge.

This distinction matters enormously for AI adoption. AI generates data about how people work. Every prompt, every document, every collaboration pattern becomes visible. In low-trust environments, this visibility creates anxiety. Employees wonder if data will be used against them. They hold back from experimentation. They avoid the transparency that AI requires to function effectively.

In high-trust environments, the same visibility becomes fuel for improvement. Teams learn from patterns. Organizations identify friction points. AI gets better because people engage with it honestly.

Suzana was explicit: employees must trust that data won’t be used against them but will be used to enhance AI capabilities. Without that trust, adoption stalls regardless of how good the technology is.

Psychological Safety as Enabler

Throughout CPO Outlook 2025, speakers discussed enabling people to fail, enabling experimentation, creating space for learning. Suzana grounded these aspirations in a specific concept: psychological safety.

Psychological safety isn’t about being comfortable or avoiding challenge. It’s about knowing that honest engagement — including mistakes, questions, and incomplete ideas — won’t create personal risk. In psychologically safe environments, people try things. They share what’s not working. They engage with new tools authentically rather than performatively.

This connects directly to what procurement leaders expressed in their open-ended survey responses. They want to stop internal politics and firefighting. They want to start building sustainable solutions and genuine partnerships. But those aspirations require environments where experimentation is safe.

The Leadership Decision

Suzana emphasized that transformation begins with a leadership team decision: the decision to start.

This sounds obvious but addresses something the surveys revealed. Organizations know what needs to change. They can articulate the competencies required, the integration gaps, the maturity progression needed. Awareness isn’t the problem.

But awareness without decision is just observation. The surveys showed organizations that recognize the need to redefine competencies but struggle to do so. Organizations with frameworks on paper but limited operational capability. Organizations that have implemented tools without integrating them.

Suzana’s counsel was to decide together, as a leadership team, to begin. Not to wait for perfect conditions. Not to pilot indefinitely. To commit to the transformation and create the environment where it can happen.

Democratizing AI

One specific element of Google’s approach deserves attention: democratizing AI across the entire organization rather than limiting it to specialized groups.

Suzana noted that Google’s data shows surprising adoption patterns. IT professionals aren’t the most advanced AI users. Marketing, procurement, and sales lead adoption — functions that deal with external relationships, dynamic situations, and varied communication needs.

The implication for procurement organizations is significant. AI fluency won’t develop if access is restricted to technical specialists or innovation teams. It develops when everyone can engage with AI tools in their daily work, learn from experience, and share what works.

This requires trust at scale. Leadership must trust that broad AI access won’t create chaos. Employees must trust that their experimentation is welcomed. Teams must trust that mistakes are learning opportunities rather than career risks.

The Cost of Low Trust

What happens when trust is absent? The surveys offer evidence.

Collaboration friction ranked among the top operational challenges. Cross-functional alignment issues appeared repeatedly. The gap between strategic sourcing and operational purchasing persists partly because functions don’t trust each other’s priorities and constraints.

In low-trust environments, AI adoption faces specific barriers:

Data hoarding rather than sharing
Performative use rather than genuine experimentation
Resistance framed as practical concerns
Innovation limited to approved channels
Risk aversion masquerading as prudence

Organizations can implement sophisticated AI tools and still fail to capture value because the trust infrastructure doesn’t exist. The technology works; the organization doesn’t let it.

Building Trust Infrastructure

How do organizations build the trust that enables transformation? Suzana offered some directions:

Measure for improvement, not judgment. When measurement data feeds learning rather than evaluation, people engage honestly. Suzana’s example of tracking document revision frequency illustrates this — it’s about understanding prompting effectiveness, not assessing individual performance.

Create psychological safety deliberately. This isn’t automatic. Leadership must actively signal that experimentation is valued, that mistakes are expected, that honest assessment of progress is welcomed.

Decide together and visibly. Transformation commitment from the leadership team, communicated clearly, creates permission for the organization to engage. Ambiguous or half-hearted commitment leaves people uncertain whether real engagement is safe.

Democratize access. Restricting AI to specialized groups signals that most people aren’t trusted with it. Broad access signals confidence in the organization’s ability to learn and adapt.

The Nordic Context

Suzana’s observation that the Nordics lag behind in AI adoption despite progressive reputation raises questions about regional trust patterns.

Nordic workplace culture often emphasizes consensus, caution, and thorough analysis before action. These can be strengths. But they can also create environments where bold moves feel risky, where being first feels exposed, where the safe choice is to wait and see.

The survey finding that zero respondents consider themselves at “leading” digital maturity may reflect this cultural pattern. Organizations know they should be further along. They have the resources and capabilities. But the decision to lead — to move ahead of peers, to accept the visibility and risk of being first — hasn’t been made.

Work That Matters

Suzana closed with a vision of work transformed — tedious elements removed, human capacity freed for relationships, innovation, and meaning. At Google, she noted, boring work has largely been eliminated. Her son asked if she likes her job. She loves it.

This vision connects to what procurement leaders consistently express: they want work that matters. They want to stop processing transactions and start building strategic value. They want to move from firefighting to forward-thinking.

Trust is the bridge. In trusted environments, AI handles the tedious. Humans focus on the meaningful. The shift happens because people believe it’s safe to let go of old patterns and engage with new possibilities.

Without trust, organizations hold onto the familiar regardless of how limiting it is. They implement AI but don’t transform. They have capability but not empowerment.

The Path Forward

For procurement leaders considering their AI journey, Suzana’s perspective offers a reframe. Before asking “what technology do we need?” ask “what trust do we need?”

Do our teams trust that experimentation is safe?
Do our people trust that data won’t be used against them?
Do our functions trust each other enough to share and collaborate?
Do our leaders trust the organization to handle real transformation?
Does the organization trust that bold action is rewarded rather than punished?

These questions don’t appear in typical maturity assessments. But they may determine outcomes more than technology choices.

The CPO Outlook 2025 audience left with a challenge: not just to implement AI, but to build environments where AI-enabled work can thrive. That requires trust. And trust requires the decision to begin building it.

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